Pain, Pain, Go Away!

My last post discussed the book It Starts with Food and the principles it's based on. Going over the post, I realized that the part about hormones raised some questions. How do cells become insulin resistant? How can too much insulin lead to weight gain? Does too much carbohydrate cause leptin resistance? I'm looking again at the book Endocrinology: Basic and Clinical Principles by Shlomo Melmed and P. Michael Conn from 2005. The book says it isn't clear how insulin resistance develops, but says that it is a "key feature of the prediabetic 'metabolic syndrome' (central obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia)" (page 318). It doesn't say how to reverse it. The book does say that insulin promotes fat formation and inhibits fat burning: Insulin promotes lipid synthesis and inhibits lipid degradation. Before insulin became available for treatment of type 1 diabetes, patients with this disease were invariably thin, reflecting

"Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes, sir, a veritable age of reason." -Ulysses McGill, O Brother, Where Art Thou? If only. Eighty years after the Tennessee Valley was put on the grid, health gurus recommend mumbo-jumbo like two-thirds of a cup of sugar a day for diabetics ,* inflammatory foods like wheat for the inflamed , and a low-fat, high-fiber, grain-based diet that fattens up livestock (in weeks!)** but is supposed to make humans slim and trim. The crazies are running the asylum. Are there any reasonable people in the mainstream? I recently sent a friend of mine the book It Starts with Food. It discusses the major hormones involved in fat storage, fat burning and inflammation, along with the authors' dietary recommendations based mostly on our paleolithic ancestors' diets and their clinical experience.

Answer: because probably, nobody else will. Awhile back, my mother's new primary care doctor saw her for a checkup. According to Mom, the doctor took her blood sugar and wrote "diabetes out of control" on her chart and prescribed Metformin and Lantus (insulin). The doctor didn't look at the blood sugar records Mom brought. Maybe it's the new medication, maybe because an infection cleared up, or maybe Mom has gotten more insulin sensitive, but she's been getting hypos in the morning. It's dangerous to have blood sugar get too low during the night. The doctor is hard to reach, and who knows how good she is at dosing insulin. Mom had been fiddling around with her evening insulin dose, but without checking her blood sugar first. So today, after she got her blood sugar up from this morning's level of 55 (70-100 is normal), I suggested she check her blood sugar before taking her evening insulin. When she checked it tonight, it was 70. After doing some

It takes anywhere from seconds to years. It depends on the issue, the person, their diet, and their lifestyle. Lierre Kieth, for instance, felt better the instant she started eating meat again--the tuna was like prana in a can. (Sadly, her back pain from the damage caused by long-term B-12 deficiency will never go away.) There have been a lot of 30-day challenges out there: 30-day paleo, 30-day Whole 9 , even 30-day gluten-free from Dr. Guyanet. (He actually had a terrific blog before he started going on about food reward.) I think these challenges last long enough to get allergens out of your system and let you see if re-exposure bothers you, yet they're short enough to seem manageable. Thirty days is more than long enough to begin clearing up GI problems caused by food. My GERD disappeared within a few days of starting a low-carb diet, and two days on a fat fast cleared up my gastritis. Some issues can take much longer. Almost a year ago, two of my teeth were knocked out of

I'm old enough to remember when the only refreshment at the office was coffee. If you wanted a snack, you had to bring your own or find a vending machine. Yet our brains worked just fine without the constant grazing: we all did our work and only new employees needed frequent reminders of standard operating procedures. Anyone too spacy to remember how to do their job was thought to be a stoner. Now, cake for every birthday is standard. Some offices have free pop and snacks (read: junk food). Soda, chips, crackers, and instant oatmeal make for unstable blood sugar in people susceptible to blood sugar swings, and roller coaster blood sugar levels affect mood, thinking and energy for the worse. How often do you see coworkers getting drowsy a few hours after lunch? How often do you hear, "My brain isn't working today"? Snicker-snacking all day long can make for high blood sugar and lethargy in some people--when it's really bad, it's called "carb coma.&quo

Have you seen the list of drugs whose patents are going to expire in 2013 to 2016 ? It reads like a shopping list of drugs you'll need on a poor diet. Out of the 27 listed, at least 13 are unnecessary (statins), unneeded on a well-planned low-carb diet (acid blockers), treat conditions that might be improved by such a diet (medications for blood pressure, anti-depressants, bipolar disorder, diabetic nerve pain, for instance), or might be improved by removing wheat and other grains (medications for schizophrenia, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and osteoporosis). On the one hand, doctors will feel less encouragement from drug salesmen, seminars and advertisements to prescribe these drugs. Without those headwinds, doctors might be more inclined to suggest diet changes. After all, avoiding grains and eating healthy fats is becoming more mainstream: the book Grain Brain (due out in September) is against wheat, sugar and carbs (presumably too much carb) and is endorsed by several mai

Is this a marketing strategy for that underserved low self-esteem market? At least they're honest.